People often comment on this one, and rightfully so I think. But what do people actually feel it should cost? Not compared to other Dashers, since they're troublesome too, but as a general, balanced-against-the-field BV cost?
So over in fan articles I kinda had a discussion style topic on this. More or less, damage as a component of the weapon's BV needs to go up, as while the current formula is good for 'kiting' pricing given 'infinite' map, the game default is not infinite maps. So shorter ranged guns will get in range, by nature of fixed game board, thus damage needs to be a cost, as well as damageXrange. Since the current weapon formula is just damageXrange, high base damage low range weapons get a criminally low cost on anything with the speed to employ it.
After crunching numbers over there, I came up with what amounts to -33% base BV on all weapons, and then 3xDamage as a 'minimum cost of existing'. This was done with wundergoats suggestion to keep medium lasers the same BV, but shorter ranged weapons go up in cost and longer ranged weapons go down. This would make the Dasher Hs offensive value increase by 66% ish.
Napkin math with that change puts the H up 330 BV, so with no other change it would be 1100. Other, longer ranged dashers would go down in cost. The anemic C, which costs about the same as a dasher H but only has 2 LRM5s for weapons, with this weapon change, would see its weapons BV go down over 50 points, lowering it from 741 to 685. Now, looking at the two, one with 54 damage in heavy smalls, and the other with 6 damage in LRMs, the weapon adjustment would change them from 779 and 741, to 1100ish and 680ish. 1100 and 680 feel much more appropriate.
1100 is hunchback territory, or a 3025 wolverine 6R currently. A dasher H at 1100 and those 2 definitely are a bit more even and feel like an appropriately balanced fight, with the edge to the dasher (and the dasher is a bit more expensive then both, so that makes sense).
On the topic specifically of the koshi, while 6 and 7 jump break points are big, the koshi isnt actually bad. In this case, 7 jump is overperforming. 5-6 jump perform fine, as the way the formula does speed values, the Koshi isnt taking much of a hit in speed factor. Weak jump is problematic more on units with drastically weak jump. Like, a 6/9 with 2 jump would be terrible because the jump would never get used, but bumps the speed factor up for something you wont use.
In the Koshi's case, the Koshi is stronger for having jump jets (if only 6) then not, cause 6 jump is still good and only results in a 22% increase in weapon BV compared to 0 jump. If the Koshi had 7 jump, then it would fall under the problems the Wraith has, AKA high jump is too strong.
I redid the speed factor and defensive modifier tables for those reasons. It should be clear to most that high jump is too efficient. In the article, I discussed part of this, but the Koshi serves as a good example here. Adding that 7th jump jet wont actually cost the koshi's defense multiple to change in the current formula (the only difference to a 7 jump koshi in the current formula is 6% more cost to weapons), because at 11 running the koshi is granted a +4 all the time anyway.
But to all that have played, the 7 jump +4 is a certianty in TMM, while 11 run is rarely a +4. For this reason, I suggested a graduated TMM multipler for running rates. A 10 MP run, in my figures, would count at TMM 3.125, increasing .125 per extra MP. Jump, in contrast, would always apply the largest TMM, cause it is a guarenteed TMM unlike running. Essentially, I just made a 'defensive speed factor' that much better aligns to what you see on the table.
